A Hospital in the Pines

Despite the rising standard of living in urban areas the Philippines, many people still cannot afford basic health care, and the need for humanitarian aid remains.

Greater Outreach Medical and Educational Destinations (GO MED), a Canadian non-profit organization, has helped fill this need by providing free surgical care to indigent patients in Baguio during an annual two week period over the past six years. This documentary follows volunteer nurses and physicians from Canada and the US as they struggle with cultural differences, language barriers, and suboptimal working conditions in an aging hospital as they both care for patients and teach local nursing students and surgical residents.

The advanced state of disease they encounter in these patients occasionally thwarts their best efforts, and they reach the limit of what is possible to cure with surgical intervention. For the volunteers of Filipino heritage, this journey is a return to their roots, driven by their personal experiences with poverty and desire to share the good fortune they now enjoy in the United States and Canada.

First-time mission volunteers are overwhelmed by the gratitude expressed by their Filipino patients, something sadly lacking in their regular jobs in North America.